In addition to being a novice bookbinder, I am an experimenter with bread.

I don’t actually eat a lot of bread. Somewhere along the way I got really picky about it, or outgrew it, or something. I like a slice of toast with peanut butter for breakfast, but oatmeal is great, too… or an egg sandwich. I don’t eat more than a couple of sandwiches every week, so unless I bake, it’s pretty rare to have a loaf of bread in the house. (Lots of naan and tortillas, though, so it’s not like we’re low carb.)

I like sandwich bread, because it’s good for toast. So I generally look for bread that can at least be modified to make a sandwich loaf.

It’s good to be aware of your actual intentions.

Do I want an amazing loaf of perfect artisanal bread?

No I do not.

(I mean, yes, I would like that very much. But that’s not my goal when baking bread.)

I want a sandwich loaf for toast. It’s quotidian, I know, but this heart knows what it wants… and it’s toast. With peanut butter. And jam.

Purists and expert bakers will have… feelings about how bread should (and does!) work. There are people who are very good at this sort of thing, who have worked for a long time to perfect their craft. If that’s your cuppa, you should definitely listen to what they have to say. (My nod to this expertise, borne from experience, is that I have an easier time baking if I weigh my flour and liquid. I’m wildly inconsistent when I do anything by volume. And I use a thermometer to check internal temperatures.)

But here’s the thing about baking bread: you don’t actually have to be great at it to get to a reasonable end product. Practice makes improvement, obviously, and following directions helps a lot. Knowing what you’re after is also helpful; an expert in high-hydration artisanal loaves might not have the answers you’re looking for if you want to make a piece of toast with peanut butter.

But you do not need the fanciest stand mixer, or the fanciest flour, or all the time in the world to create a reasonable loaf of bread. If you want a homemade loaf of bread, find a recipe that fits your time requirements and the kind of equipment you have or want to use, and give it a try.

I guarantee that whatever you make will taste great… at least as good as what you can get at the grocery store.

Here are a couple of my favorites right now:

Low-Knead Sandwich Bread (Kenji Lopez-Alt for The New York Times)

If you’re not interested in a long ferment, here’s a riff on Peter Reinhart’s Light Wheat Sandwich Loaf (which I converted to a white loaf because whole wheat flour doesn’t sit well in my gut), from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

Light Wheat White Bread: a very basic, slightly enriched, recipe

• 18 oz bread flour
• 3 TBSP soy milk powder (or cow’s milk powder, if that works for you)
• 1.5 tsp kosher salt
• 1.5 tsp instant yeast
• 11 oz room temperature water

Mix together flour, soy milk powder, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add water and mix until combined. Move to bread board and knead for approximately 10 minutes (if you have a stand mixer and want to use it, kneading will take less time… this dough is dense, so know your mixer).

The resulting dough ball should be smooth, smell kind of yeast-y and bounce back slowly when pressed with your finger.

Place in lightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for ~ 90 minutes (until doubled in size). If your kitchen is cool (mine is for most of the year), you can put the dough in an improvised “proofer” … your microwave, or oven (turning on the light will warm the oven a little bit).

Take dough out of the bowl and work it into a log shape. (If you want a visual about how to do this, check out this post from The Perfect Loaf.)

Place in a lightly oiled 9″ x 5″ loaf pan, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 60 – 90 minutes, until the dough crests the rim of the pan. (Make sure to check it! This recipe uses quite a bit of yeast, and it gets very active, particularly if it’s warm.)

30 minutes before baking, preheat oven to 350°F. Bake risen dough for 30 – 40 minutes, rotating halfway through. Remove from pan within 5 minutes of removing from oven and let cool for at least an hour (more like two) before attempting to slice. Finished bread internal temperature should be 190°F, or should sound hollow when the bottom is tapped.

(We store our bread in the fridge — which is not great — because we occasionally have mice… which is common if, like us, you live with a parrot… or (also like us, when we lived in NYC) you live over a restaurant. If you don’t have a rodent issue, store at room temperature.)

I’m a novice bookbinder. Not quite a complete beginner, but still green enough that I need checklists and to look up how to tie a weaver’s knot to refresh my memory. As with any endeavor, when you’re a novice, all bets are off. It might turn out… it might not… it’s a bit of a (looks around) gamble. (Get it? “Making book” — I’m terrible at puns.)

In other words, I’m enough of a beginner that I don’t know what I don’t know, so any project like this requires a bit of a leap of faith. That I’ll be able to figure it out in a way that gets me from point A to point B. Won’t be perfect, but hopefully it will be workable.

I have the opportunity to take an online sketching workshop presented by an artist whose work I enjoy: Dina Brodsky (IG: @dinabrodsky), and her sketchbook is handmade by an artist in Great Britain, Will J. Bailey. Not gonna lie, it’s a beautiful book made with some really nice watercolor paper.

I went looking to learn more about it, and WOW… gorgeous. At some point I would like to be worthy of such a book. Right now it’s too intimidating (and too big for my comfort), but maybe someday… As it turns out, Mr. Bailey has a couple of YouTube videos explaining his process (including why he started making sketchbooks). The first one can be found here: https://youtu.be/tjyQ7ZErlY8.

This is exactly my cuppa, friends: Homemade books you can (water)color in.

I’ve been making pamphlet stitched inserts for my (me-made, Travelers-style) nature journal using a box of 90lb, 9″ x 12″ sheets of watercolor paper. It’s good for being outside when you’re not planning on making a work of art, just spending some time seeing and recording. (This incomplete page from a trip to the local arboretum. I spent my time with a red oak, which apparently likes to grow in and around lodgepole pines. The tree’s habit is very much not “oak-y,” but its leaves are an immediate giveaway.)

Really nice watercolor paper is not inexpensive, and it would be a shame to waste any of it on a learning project, particularly when I have a stash of paper that will a) help me get started, and b) still be useful to me in some capacity.

So I am spending some time learning how to bind a sketchbook using this less expensive paper. When my skills are a little more reliable, and my sketchbook habits and skills are strong enough to warrant, I’ll graduate to the prettier, more robust paper. In the meantime, I’ll be making my own journals… and probably some gifts (warning: if you know me, you may be gifted a handmade book or two).

Here’s a text block, using the cheaper paper, but still sewn on tapes and glued. I have a small press, but I chose to use pressing boards to let the spine cure.

This one turned out pretty well, for a first effort, but it’s not square, so instead of case binding it, I glued some cheap chipboard to the first and last pages to stabilize it.

And then I used a paper bag to fold a cover for it. (Rüt is a vegan restaurant in our neighborhood. We like their food, and had it for dinner last night.)

Next up: two more sets of signatures to sew, paying better attention to keeping the blocks square while they’re under pressure.

The goal is to case bind these books… fingers crossed!

Thursdays are my volunteer days at the Outdoor Learning Center, which means I get to spend some time working with Arden, our unreleasable red-tailed hawk (poorly healed wrist injury — she can mostly fly and prefers to perch high, but she has a knot of scar tissue on her right wrist, and it was determined by both veterinarian and rehabber that she would struggle if released.)

She’s (mostly) fearless, and very opinionated. She’s wary of crates, cameras, excited tiny humans. She flat out does not like changeable weather (changing barometric pressure –> restless bird). She could take or leave showers from the hose, and prefers to bathe when no one is around. When she’s wound up or stressed out, she’ll sometimes hang from the ceiling (which is not a thing we encourage, but it’s also not a thing we’re going to harass her to stop).

But she seems to appreciate being outside on summer mornings when it’s a little bit cool and breezy. We have a water feature, so as often as we can, we go hang out there. We can listen to the water and enjoy the cool morning.

But, add too much attention from the camera to a distraction overhead and you get this:

Sometimes even Arden can be a little derpy.

She’s perfect and I love her.

Today marks one year since I woke up unable to move, sit, or stand, without excruciating pain. It marked the end of what I like to refer to as “my very brief and undistinguished stint as a patio installer.”

(I’m sure the PA I worked with initially — who was perfectly compassionate and businesslike — was mildly amused when he saw me. “Oh, look, another middle-aged lady with back issues.” He didn’t even have to examine me, just took a look at my posture and listened to my situation, and was like, “here’s what we’re going to do…”)

I’m happy to report that after a week of prednisolone (anti-inflammatory) + gabapentin (nerve blocker) + methocarbamol (muscle relaxant), six weeks of rest, 10 weeks of physical therapy and the intervening months of yoga, core workouts, range-of-motion workouts (including splits training!), and walking, I’m (mostly) pain free.

Can I lift anything heavy or awkward?

I cannot.

Can I work for hours on end in the garden?

Nope.

Can I sit for hours on end?

Ummm, no.

But let’s face it, none of us is supposed to sit for hours at a time without a movement break.

(And no, my splits aren’t there… YET. It’s been a long time, and while I’m happy to report that my flexibility is still mostly there and I’m pretty strong… well, it’s been a long time.)

Part of the problem with my injury is hyper mobility in my back, and I still have a bunch of work to do to strengthen my core and improve my stamina. But I know *how* to do that work now without exacerbating it. I can tell when I’m getting too close to something titchy, and to modify the effort. (Do I always do it when I should? No, but I’m learning.)

I can do all of my daily stuff without issue, and almost all of my volunteer stuff. I can lift our very old, small (15lb) dog, with ease, when I need to take her down the stairs or to the vet. I can stand to cook and bake, to present with birds, and to draw in the field. No issues with any of that stuff!

My only ongoing issue is some numbness in my left shin, so there’s still some impingement, but it doesn’t hinder my ability to move at all. It feels funny when I shave my legs, but that’s the only real issue… and how real is that, really? (Minor! So minor!)

I am grateful. For helpful physicians, and helpful medications. For physical therapy, and physical therapists! For yoga apps. For a nice neighborhood to walk around in. For improved self-awareness. But most of all, for healing.

… when you’re making other plans. That’s how the saying goes, right?

Well, we’re in it right now. Not gonna lie, it’s unpleasant, sad, and frustrating. There are some things that I just wish we could avoid, but that’s not possible. Trying to stay present and make good decisions in the midst of it all is a challenge… one I’m not sure I’m equipped for. I’m trying.

But it is spring, and I’m starting to see some of the perennials I planted last fall come back, and that feels kind of magical.

It’s all a grand experiment in the backyard. Now that we have a working patio (hooray!), I can turn my attention to the actual yard, and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do to make some reasonable bird and bug habitat. I’m working on a bed on the west side of the house that gets a bunch of sun, putting in native plants (and non-natives adjusted to our poor soil) that birds and bees find appealing.

It was SO HOT last summer (90+ degrees for 40 days, and well into the 80s for several more) that I stopped buying plants in the late spring, and put off most of it until the fall (the buying and the planting). Then I worried that I got everything in too late for it to start establishing before it all froze and was covered by snow.

Some of the perennials die back dramatically, like, to the soil, after their seasons, so because they basically disappeared I had no idea what would survive. Evidence so far suggests that at least some of them did… yay!

The Mugo pines also did pretty well, and I’m waiting to see if some of the grasses, the Russian sages (that have been stepped on a few times, sadly), and the ice flowers do their thing. One of the coneflowers is making an attempt, so that’s good. We have some lavenders that I planted last spring that struggled in the heat, but will hopefully have become better established. Our mock orange plants are starting to send out leaves as well, so hopefully they’ll thrive this year.

I am thankful that in the midst of personal challenge, the change in seasons injects some much needed perspective: there are seasons to life. Change is always happening, for better or for worse.

So, my New Year’s Resolution to try a new-to-me recipe every week is going pretty well. Or it was going pretty well, until the baked doughnuts with coffee glaze…

I honestly don’t know what happened. I thought I followed the recipe, but maybe I made a mistake somewhere. My oven is very old, so maybe it wasn’t up to the task. I measured out the ingredients by weight, not by volume, and I think that maybe the weight of baking powder was more than the volume, but I’m not sure that would have caused this kind of disaster.

I’m not all that upset, to be honest. I mean, it would have been nice not to waste the ingredients, but whether it’s a mistake I made (likely), an aging oven issue (less likely, but not out of the question), or the recipe needs a little tweaking (unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility), it’s okay to fail every now and again.

Makes you think a little bit…

I’m going to try a different recipe, because I like the idea of baked doughnuts. I’ll see if a different technique works better. If it’s “bad user on device” I can work out my issues. And if it’s my oven… well, we did take a trip to Lowe’s this last weekend to look at what our options are. (I mean really, the oven is 40 years old and I’ve replaced the element three times in the last 10 years…)

I’ll get it figured out. And if I don’t? It’s not rocket science or brain surgery.

P.S. I tried a different recipe — similar method, but little bit different ingredients. The second try was a smashing success.

We live with a lesser sulphur-crested cockatoo named Bernini. She’s been with us for 23 of her 24 years.

Because she was young when she came to us, her eyes were still very dark, so we thought she was a male. The two things happened: she got boy crazy (for human boys), and her irises lightened to a beautiful burnt orange. A DNA test proved what we suspected — she’s definitely a female.

She is a good bird. She loves my husband, but she tolerates others (including me) reasonably well. Despite some anxiety around people she doesn’t know, and a fear of trucks and buses (?), she has a good bit of confidence.

She has her own room in our house. It’s small, but it’s warm in the winter, cool in the summer, has a lot of western light (afternoon). Her cage is large and well stocked with toys. She’s fed, watered, and has a superficial cage cleaning twice a day. She’s not a biter, at least not without warning (when she feels like things aren’t going the way she thinks they should, she’ll give you a warning nip so you know to back off). She feels safe enough in her space that when someone she doesn’t know comes into the house to do maintenance, she removes herself to her cage until the person leaves.

When at least one of us is at home, she has the option to come out of her cage. She has places around the house that she likes to spend time: the towel rack in the bathroom, a wire rack in the sun room, the back of the couch in front of a picture window. Or she can stay in her cage and work on her toys.

Here’s the thing about parrots: though they are incredibly social, they like to have some patterns in their days. They like to “get up” at roughly the same time, and go to bed at roughly the same time. They need time to socialize with their flocks (avian or human), so should not be left to their own devices for hours and hours each day.

But they also like (and need) a little bit of alone time each day. B likes a couple of hours in the morning after breakfast, so she can eat, maybe take a nap, enjoy the day.

And that’s the problem. I used to leave the house for a couple of hours each morning when Dana went to work. I would go get some coffee, and journal or start working or run errands. When the “lockdowns” started, Dana and I were both home all day, every day. Dana went back to the office as soon as he could, but my morning ritual no longer exists (at least during the winter). I go for walks each day, and volunteer two mornings a week, so that’s something, but it’s not enough for B.

It has made everything about our days more difficult. We are all strung out because everything about her already giant personality is amplified when she doesn’t get some downtime. We took her to the vet to make sure that everything is OK with her (she’s fine, a little overweight but not obese). The vet said that the parrot she and her husband live with was having similar issues, and recommended a parrot behaviorist to us.

She’s a good bird, but at this point we all need a little bit of help.

“An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” ~ Newton’s First Law of Motion

I like this statement. Physics has never been my jam — it’s not that I don’t appreciate physics, it’s that I don’t have any grasp of calculus. But Newton’s First Law makes a lot of sense to me in a pragmatic way.

Flighted birds have gigantic pectoralis muscles for their size… so big that they require an extra bit of equipment (a keel) to support them. Birds that are healthy, capable flyers have incredible muscle tone across their chests. They also have multiphasic breathing to provide oxygen to their flight muscles. (Yes, I agree, they’re amazing.) They have perfect adaptations for the most energy intensive part of their lives: becoming and staying airborne.

I come from a long line of people who wait, for permission, for validation, for “the right time.” (Not the adult men, mind you, but the women and children, who are somehow not capable of action without approval.) These things don’t spring out of nowhere, so it’s likely been going on for generations.

I have witnessed, in myself and in others, the effects of this kind of waiting. Nothing gets done and the person stuck in the waiting position suffers from the stress, anxiety, and depression that comes from… well… waiting, for permission/approval/validation that will likely never be forthcoming.

Being stuck (when you don’t have to be) is its own kind of trouble. Not only do you feel like you can’t move, you lack the experience and practice of being in motion.

(Anyone who has had to wait for biopsy results can tell you that, obviously, there are times when waiting is all a person can do. I’m not talking about those times here.)

When I find myself or a loved one in this kind of unnecessary holding pattern, the pep talk goes like this: Pick an objective — anything — and start moving in that direction. The goal at the beginning is to begin moving so you know what it feels like to be in motion. You will encounter resistance at some point, and at that point you have some decisions to make: keep going and push through, adjust your course, or pick a new objective. But do not stop moving. The idea is that once you are moving, in any direction, it’s easier to stay in motion.

When you are stuck, this is very, very difficult. Transitioning from an “at rest” position to an “in motion” situation requires an enormous amount of energy, particularly when whatever obstacles you face are invested in keeping you moving in the wrong direction, or maintaining the status quo of rest.

We see this with owls. Owls are capable of silent flight, which is great for hunting (if you rely on your sense of hearing, not getting in your own way is a good thing). The trade-off is a loss of efficiency; it requires an enormous amount of energy (more than birds without these specialized flight feathers) to get airborne. Once they’re in the air, they have an easier time — not super maneuverable, but capable flyers.

Thankfully, at the moment I’m not stuck at rest. There are some things I need to address (thanks, therapy!), but I am actually in motion in a few different ways. It’s time for me to adjust some of my volunteering impulses (where I’m working hard on other people’s projects), find a focus that belongs to me (requires some exploration), and pivot to move in that direction.

Should be easy, no? (JK, won’t be easy, but I’m a healthy songbird, not a grounded owl.)

Big stuff going on in our household at the moment.

Our 16-year-old dog is declining. She was declining precipitously there for a while, but she seems to be coming back from the brink… for now. We don’t know how much longer we have with her, so every day feels both precious and like it will never be enough.

Covid is… declining? In this region it looks like it’s starting to plateau. Both case counts and hospitalizations are much lower than they were even a month ago, so I’m relaxing some of my mask wearing. When grocery shopping? No mask. When around kids where I volunteer? Mask. Crowded restaurants? Hard pass. Sitting on patios and decks to eat? All in.

Still cooking and baking. When there’s nothing that can be done about a sick dog or cranky parrot, we still need to eat. As I type this I’ve got some experimental chickpea “meat” balls in the oven. I made kofta with black beans last night — a bust because of a rookie mistake on my end — but this chickpea version might be better suited to my taste.

This grand experiment has reinforced a couple of things in my mind.

Number one: I’m really not all that creative as a cook. I mean, I’m really good at following directions (rookie kofta mistake aside), but I’ll never be one of those people who can pull out whatever is in the fridge and make a three-course meal out of it. I mean, I might be able to put together a simple stir-fry, but not much else.

Number 2: While I don’t mind cooking, I’m not passionate about it. I like to eat what I like to eat, and I don’t want to rely on other people to make it for me, so that’s as good a motivation as any, I guess. (And also, our weird dietary preferences and restrictions require some extra attention by someone, and that someone would be me.)

Moving on…

In recent conversations, I have been asked what I do. The answer right now is, not much. I was doing some freelance graphic design before the pandemic. It was not going well, and then it was not going at all. And I’m not going to lie, it was a bit of a relief at the time.

Over the last several years, I’ve gotten very good at volunteering. I didn’t need a salary (thankfully), and was so broken from a work situation that lasted more than a decade where bullying was a thing, that I gravitated toward volunteer situations where I could a) make a tangible impact, and b) wouldn’t be subject to abuse.

I was Spokane Audubon’s newsletter editor for five years, which was super fun. I was a private art tutor for a little while, and got to work with an extraordinary student. While I enjoyed those experiences, I do not wish to repeat them as a volunteer.

I’m a raptor docent at the West Valley Outdoor Learning Center (and have been for the last ten years) — I still love working with the birds, but I’m learning that I need to set better boundaries around the rest of it. Like, maybe I don’t need to be on the hook for cleaning 2x/week — maybe I can be more helpful if I have one regular shift and can help out when other people need to miss their shift.

And now it’s time to figure out what’s next beyond volunteering, and I have no idea. I still don’t need a 9-to-5, and I’m grateful for that. But I also need to figure out a new direction with some different patterns… wish me luck, I guess.

Last year sucked. So far, this year has also sucked. Thanks for nothing, Covid.

For 2022, I decided that I wanted to try some new things to counter the suckitude. I’m the cook in my household and my kitchen is fairly well stocked (even though most of my pans are from the 90s and my range is so old they don’t make burners for it any more). So this year I have been trying at least one, new-to-me recipe each week.

We’ve had baked goods, dumplings, a couple of soups, and last night, a West African staple, akara (black-eyed pea fritters).

I’m cooking and baking recipes by Black chefs and recipe developers this month because it’s Black History Month, and I’ve found that, for me, because white everything is my default (because I’m white and am surrounded by mostly white people), it’s important for me to actively seek out the work of people who are different from me.

(To that end, upcoming recipes include Afghan Ashak, Korean Curried tteokbokki, and Mexican conchas… and more dumplings… lots more dumplings.)

I’m enjoying the cooking, so far. Most of it is plant-based, because I don’t eat meat and Dana can’t have dairy. (If you need to avoid dairy for whatever reason, the vegans have got you covered — some enormous creativity on that front.) Cooking from someone else’s recipe is an interesting way to get some insight into their thinking about food, and I’m enjoying reading the cookbooks (and web sites, and blogs). As with our “regular” food, there’s not a lot of tofu or meat substitutes in these recipes so far (tofu will make an appearance next week). There’s nothing wrong with tofu or meat substitutes, but I cook them about as often as most people use beef, which is to say, not daily.

I think, most importantly, it’s giving me an opportunity to try new-to-me things. It’s fueling my need to have novel experiences (a thing I have sorely missed during the pandemic), and in some ways (dumplings) it has been a way to experiment with food that I love but have a difficult time finding (because I don’t eat meat).

I’m making a chocolate cake with whipped ganache and berries for Valentine’s Day (from Black Girl Baking: Wholesome Recipes Inspired by a Soulful Upbringing, by Jerrelle Guy), and next week I’m making Lil’ Tofu Po’Boys with Creamy Red Bell Pepper Sauce (from Afro-Vegan: Farm-fresh African, Caribbean and Southern Flavors Remixed, by Bryant Terry).

So far, finding a new recipe to cook every week has been a lovely practice, and has yielded some fun surprises (those black-eyed pea fritters are the bomb). I’m looking forward to seeing what else we enjoy.